Spring is here and that means it's time for another edition of the Nur Ein!

Nur Ein X!

Here's how it all works:

The Nur Ein is a 8 round song competition. In each round, the participants are given a song title and a mandatory challenge and are given 5 days in which to finish that song. Then this year's group of Nur Ein Judges (TBA) will listen to the songs and rate them from best to worst. Each round whittles down the field until we are left with only 1 competitor. Creativity x Skill x Time Management = Nur Ein!

A quick note: You may have noticed that I'm not Niveous. He usually runs this, but for personal reasons (discussed in part in the Nur Ein IX Final Round thread) he's decided not to be on the judging panel this year. He has left the competition in my hands, and I will try as best I can not to let you guys down.

This year's Nur Ein will start on Monday, April 13th with Round Zero. Round Zero is open to all who wish to take on the Nur Ein. The participants will have until Monday April 20th at 12:01AM (Eastern Daylight Time) to create a song from the title and complete the challenge. When a competitor completes a song, it is to be e-mailed to the judges*. The songs will then be posted at the Nur Ein website (http://sfbase.net/wiki/Nur_Ein) and the next title and challenge will be announced at the same time. On the 20th & 21st, the Judges will make their decisions and then the judges will cut down the field to 25 with an announcement at some point on the evening of the 21st.

Here's the schedule:
(Obviously, this is subject to change if something catastrophic happens, or if we don't get 25 bands in Round 0)

The final round is a battle between the two remaining competitors with the votes of the eliminated competitors and the Nur Ein Jury will choosing the winner (one vote per "act," whether you're a band or a solo competitor; if you're a duo, trio, quartet, quintet, or more, you'll need to discuss internally how to allocate that one vote).

The game is on. Nur Ein!!!!!!!!!!

*I'm not sure if I'll have access to the same email address from past years. I'm communicating with Niveous to work out details such as this. Watch this space for updates.

Wow, a changing of the guard I didn't expect. Mostly because I forgot Niveous hinted it would happen last year, oops. One question about the wiki, will Nur Ein IX go onto that wiki at some point too? I feel like the Nur Ein Web presence situation is sadly still somewhat fragmented. :/

I agree that we need to work on this fragmentation. My understanding was that Manhattan Glutton was tackling this, but I'm not sure if it's still on his radar. I've been given the authority, but I don't have the "keys to the house" yet, so I'll do what I can when I can. Since there's no cover art from last year, it should be reasonably easy to import the data. I'll work with Niveous and MG to figure out the easiest way to handle this.

I'd also like to get all those Nur Ein IX posts un-stickied. I've asked for Mod permissions, but don't have them yet. Can one of the Mods handle this for me?

MG may be busy with wedding planning stuff. His Web site (NOT the wiki) for last year http://nurein.songlander.com/ was cool but seemed unfinished. There was cover art for last year though Jon. It seemed like it was only ever posted to MG's Nur Ein Web site. If MG wanted to share his code I could try to finish what he was working on. Alternatively I could try to hack something else together too, then we'd have yet another incomplete effort at making an ultimate Nur Ein site.

that first week is going to be a challenge for me as I've got travel plans I'll have to work around and will have very little time to get anything done, but I guess it's just week 0 so as long as not too many people enter ... ...

Carlo won Nur Ein VIII two years ago, and sat on the panel for Nur Ein IX last year. He did an excellent job, but I would not begrudge him the chance to try for the title again on the momentous occasion of our decennial. If you wanna compete, Carlo, then good luck to you!

The main downside I saw to the ManGlut schedule was everyone immediately started working on the next song. There were few comments on each others songs, esp in the early rounds... Or maybe it just felt that way to me because I had to work thru all the Boffo Yux Listening Parties.